Ancient animal urine provides insight into climate change

Oct 12, 2010

This image shows a hyrax basking in the sun. Credit: University of Leicester

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Leicester are using an unusual resource to investigate ancient climates prehistoric animal urine.

The animal in question is the rock hyrax, a common species in countries such as Namibia and Botswana. They look like large guinea pigs but are actually related to the elephant. Hyraxes use specific locations as communal toilets, some of which have been used by generations of animals for thousands of years. The urine crystallises and builds up in stratified accumulations known as middens, providing a previously untapped resource for studying long-term climate change.

Funding from the Leverhulme Trust and, more recently, the European Research Council has allowed the Leicester group to join an international team led by Dr Brian Chase, from the Institut des Sciences de lEvolution de Montpellier, to study these unique deposits. With Dr Chase, Drs Andrew Carr and Arnoud Boom from the University of Leicesters Department of Geography are engaged in exploring novel records of past environmental change preserved within the middens.

Their work has recently been published in the journals Quaternary Research, Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology and Geology.

Dr. Brian Chase is abseiling to sample a midden. Credit: University of Leicester

In order to study past environmental changes scientists typically acquire samples from deposits laid down in bogs or lakes, within which organic matter, which can be dated is preserved, explains Dr Carr. But in dryland environments such as southern Africa this isnt possible. Fortunately it seems that hyrax urine preserves organic matter over timescales of tens of thousands of years, which provides remarkable insights into past environmental changes within the hyrax habitat.

Obtaining the material is not easy and Dr Chase is an experienced rock-climber, which allows him to reach middens that are often otherwise inaccessible. The middens form extremely tough deposits, which have to then be cut from the rocks with an angle grinder.

Using forensic techniques the Leicester group has been able to identify the individual organic molecules preserved in the middens; these include compounds produced by the hyraxes metabolism and plant-derived molecules which passed through the animals digestive system. These biomarkers provide clues as to the kind of plants the animals were eating and therefore the sort of environment they were living in. The biomarkers thus reveal insights into how the climate of the region has changed during the last 30,000 years, with a potential accuracy of a few decades to centuries.

Palaeoenvironmental records in this area were fragmentary, says Dr Carr. The middens are providing unique terrestrial records to compare against nearby deep ocean-core records, allowing us to think in much more detail about what drives African climate change.

This is a very dynamic environment, and it appears that that the regions climate changed in a complex manner during and after the last global Ice Age (around 20,000 years ago). The next step, which is part of Dr Chases new research project, will be to compare the midden data against simulations of past climates generated by GCMs [computer-based general circulation models that are used to simulate both past and future climates] to evaluate their performance and explore why climates have changed the way they have.

Although the rock hyrax middens have been previously used to study pollen, this is the first time that their full potential to document the regions climate has been explored. Drs Chase, Carr, Boom and their colleagues have already a number of scientific papers on hyrax urine, with more in production.

Related Stories

Experts have long believed there are two main ways our brains work: cognition, which is thinking or processing information, and affect, which is feeling or emotion. However, a new breakthrough was just made ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- The challenges faced by recent retirees are changing how we plan for and expect to experience retirement in the future, say the academics working on a new University of Melbourne study.

(PhysOrg.com) -- As climate change continues to emerge as the biggest challenge of the 21st century, the race to come up with novel ways to deal with the threat has become more urgent than ever. Carbon capture and storage ...

The ocean is a large reservoir of dissolved organic molecules, and many of these molecules are stable against microbial utilization for hundreds to thousands of years. They contain a similar amount of carbon ...

The fires superimposed on the satellite image of southeastern Australia designated by red spots may be indicative of "planned burns" by the Victoria region. This map: http://www.depi.vic.gov.au/fire-and-emergencies/planned-burns/planned-burns-now-and-next-10-days found on the Department of the Environment and Primary Industries for the State of Victoria shows the burns th ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Typhoon Maysak as it strengthened into a super typhoon on March 31, reaching Category 5 hurricane status on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. The TRMM and GPM satellites, ...

An international research team, led by a Virginia Tech geoscientist, has revealed information about how continents were generated on Earth more than 2.5 billion years ago—and how those processes have continued ...

The 2010 eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull grounded thousands of air flights and spread ash over much of western Europe, yet it was puny compared to the eruption 200 years ago of Tambora, ...

In fact, evidence against CO2-induced global warming continues to accumulate. It is only a matter of time until the floor drops out from under Al Gore and his friends. That's why they are in such a panic to get cap and trade passed before everyone finds out they have been fooled. Too bad for all the people clinging to the idea that they can become heroes by saving the planet from the inpending doom of environmental collapse. It really makes them 'feel good' to 'do something' for the environment. Without CO2 reduction as a goal, they'll have to find a new messiah for their faith.

I, for one, eagerly await data from our new fleet of space-based solar and earth observatories. Launced in recent years and just now starting to deliver results, those spacecraft should do quite a bit to correct the scorecard on climate change. It's going to get more and more difficult for alarmists to make false claims.

I, for one, eagerly await data from our new fleet of space-based solar and earth observatories. Launced in recent years and just now starting to deliver results, those spacecraft should do quite a bit to correct the scorecard on climate change. It's going to get more and more difficult for alarmists to make false claims.

When the facts are revealed, I would not want to be Al Gore and the world leaders that have abused science as a propaganda tool.

Okay, so how does Jupiter fit into this? The sun and Jupiter are two entirely different animals? If the sun is driven by neutron repulsion, then no matter how much hydrogen you add to a Juper-like planet you still won't end up with a sun? Or would you accumulate hydrogen and iron in eqaual proportions as the sun and then end up with another star? How does this fit into the seemingly observed progression by way of mass from a super-jupiter to a brown dwarf and then to a star? I'm not sure I follow the entire line of progression and how you could end up with a binary or trinary system. The neutron core would seem to be far too dominant in that proces and exclusive of multi-core systems.

Please bear with me. I only understand this stuff in the broadest terms. I also wonder about the implications of your theory in terms of relatifvistic physics. A neutron core should have very pronounced effects in terms of time and space distortions, shouldn't it? You're talking about a huge energy ...

... energy density at the core of the sun if I'm understanding you correctly, right? Wouldn't there be some observeable characteristics of such a huge energy density, even at the distance of the sun's surface? If not, then there must surely be a void of some kind between the core and the observable layers? The gradient of energy density from the core outward can't be a simple one, can it?

I'm also curious about how your theory fits into the age of stars and the 'main sequence' progression. I'm sure you've thought about all this, but you seem like you'd like to share your thoughts, so I thought I'd ask. Please keep in mind that I'm a layman with barely enough vocabulary to keep up and about a quarter of the math skills.

So Oliver K. Manuel you say "Little or no evidence". Which is it? Do you admit there is some evidence or think there is no evidence?For someone with the supposed experience of 'Former NASA PrincipalInvestigator for Apollo' your logic is seriously flawed and your scientific reasoning is verging on the lunatic (pun intended). Might I suggest to Physorg that you are an imposter....and I'm sure that Physorg understand that legal recourse from the genuine Oliver K. Manuel might lead to a messy law suit....don't they?

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.